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No way out of Ebola quarantine zone

Story highlights

The World Health Organization says 120 health care workers have died in the outbreak

Quarantine on West Point slum was imposed after rioters looted a treatment center

The center is slowly being rebuilt, the only refuge for the slum's frightened residents

A red rope guarded by police marks the "quarantine line" around the West Point slum in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Beyond it, more than 70,000 people are trapped -- angry, scared and increasingly hungry -- as authorities seek to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

As soon as a CNN team crossed the line, it was swarmed by people desperate to be heard.

Since the government designated the slum an Ebola quarantine zone last week, there has been no way out. Stuck without sanitation or running water, and with food supplies for many running low, people fear for their lives.

The quarantine measures were imposed after rioters looted an Ebola treatment center in the slum, claiming the virus was a government hoax.

A nurse at the center told CNN she arrived for her shift that night to find the center destroyed and not a patient to be found.

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British Ebola patient arrives in London

Red Cross workers, wearing protective suits, carry the body of a person who died from Ebola during a burial in Monrovia, Liberia, on Monday, January 5. Since the epidemic started a little more than a year ago in a remote village in Guinea, the world has seen more than 10,000 deaths, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization. And that number is believed to be low, since there was widespread under-reporting of cases, according to WHO.

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Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish woman diagnosed with Ebola, is put on a plane in Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday, December 30. Cafferkey, a 39-year-old nurse who volunteered in Sierra Leone, was being transported to London for treatment.

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Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has her temperature taken before the opening of a new Ebola clinic Tuesday, November 25, in Monrovia.

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A child who survived the Ebola virus is fed by another survivor at a treatment center on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Tuesday, November 11.

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Health workers in Monrovia cover the body of a man suspected of dying from the Ebola virus on Friday, October 31.

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Kaci Hickox leaves her home in Fort Kent, Maine, to take a bike ride with her boyfriend on Thursday, October 30. Hickox, a nurse, recently returned to the United States from West Africa, where she treated Ebola victims. State authorities wanted her to avoid public places for 21 days -- the virus' incubation period. But Hickox, who twice tested negative for Ebola, said she would defy efforts to keep her quarantined at home.

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Crew members at an airport in Accra, Ghana, unload supplies sent from China on Wednesday, October 29.

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Health officials in Nairobi, Kenya, prepare to screen passengers arriving at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Tuesday, October 28.

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U.S. President Barack Obama hugs Ebola survivor Nina Pham in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday, October 24. Pham, one of two Dallas nurses diagnosed with the virus, was declared Ebola-free after being treated at a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The other nurse, Amber Vinson (not pictured), was treated in Atlanta and also declared Ebola-free.

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Health workers in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, transport the body of a person who is suspected to have died of Ebola on Tuesday, October 21.

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Health workers bury a body on the outskirts of Monrovia on Monday, October 20.

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Garteh Korkoryah, center, is comforted during a memorial service for her son, Thomas Eric Duncan, on Saturday, October 18, in Salisbury, North Carolina. Duncan, a 42-year-old Liberian citizen, died October 8 in a Dallas hospital. He was in the country to visit his son and his son's mother, and he was the first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola.

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Boys run from blowing dust as a U.S. military aircraft leaves the construction site of an Ebola treatment center in Tubmanburg, Liberia, on Wednesday, October 15.

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Aid workers from the Liberian Medical Renaissance League stage an Ebola awareness event October 15 in Monrovia. The group performs street dramas throughout Monrovia to educate the public on Ebola symptoms and how to handle people who are infected with the virus.

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Ebola survivors prepare to leave a Doctors Without Borders treatment center after recovering from the virus in Paynesville, Liberia, on October 12.

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A woman crawls toward the body of her sister as a burial team takes her away for cremation Friday, October 10, in Monrovia. The sister had died from Ebola earlier in the morning while trying to walk to a treatment center, according to her relatives.

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A person peeks out from the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States, was staying on Friday, October 3.

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A girl cries as community activists approach her outside her Monrovia home on Thursday, October 2, a day after her mother was taken to an Ebola ward.

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A health official uses a thermometer Monday, September 29, to screen a Ukrainian crew member on the deck of a cargo ship at the Apapa port in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Workers move a building into place as part of a new Ebola treatment center in Monrovia on September 28.

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Medical staff members at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Monrovia burn clothes belonging to Ebola patients on Saturday, September 27.

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Medics load an Ebola patient onto a plane at Sierra Leone's Freetown-Lungi International Airport on Monday, September 22.

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A few people are seen in Freetown during a three-day nationwide lockdown on Sunday, September 21. In an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus, people in Sierra Leone were told to stay in their homes.

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Supplies wait to be loaded onto an aircraft at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday, September 20. It was the largest single shipment of aid to the Ebola zone to date, and it was coordinated by the Clinton Global Initiative and other U.S. aid organizations.

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A child stops on a Monrovia street Friday, September 12, to look at a man who is suspected of suffering from Ebola.

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Health workers in Monrovia place a corpse into a body bag on Thursday, September 4.

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After an Ebola case was confirmed in Senegal, people load cars with household items as they prepare to cross into Guinea from the border town of Diaobe, Senegal, on Wednesday, September 3.

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Crowds cheer and celebrate in the streets Saturday, August 30, after Liberian authorities reopened the West Point slum in Monrovia. The military had been enforcing a quarantine on West Point, fearing a spread of the Ebola virus.

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A health worker wearing a protective suit conducts an Ebola prevention drill at the port in Monrovia on Friday, August 29.

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Volunteers working with the bodies of Ebola victims in Kenema, Sierra Leone, sterilize their uniforms on Sunday, August 24.

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A burial team from the Liberian Ministry of Health unloads bodies of Ebola victims onto a funeral pyre at a crematorium in Marshall, Liberia, on Friday, August 22.

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Dr. Kent Brantly leaves Emory University Hospital on Thursday, August 21, after being declared no longer infectious from the Ebola virus. Brantly was one of two American missionaries brought to Emory for treatment of the deadly virus.

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An Ebola Task Force soldier beats a local resident while enforcing a quarantine on the West Point slum on August 20.

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Local residents gather around a very sick Saah Exco, 10, in a back alley of the West Point slum on Tuesday, August 19. The boy was one of the patients that was pulled out of a holding center for suspected Ebola patients after the facility was overrun and closed by a mob on August 16. A local clinic then refused to treat Saah, according to residents, because of the danger of infection. Although he was never tested for Ebola, Saah's mother and brother died in the holding center.

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A burial team wearing protective clothing retrieves the body of a 60-year-old Ebola victim from his home near Monrovia on Sunday, August 17.

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Workers prepare the new Ebola treatment center on August 17.

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Liberian police depart after firing shots in the air while trying to protect an Ebola burial team in the West Point slum of Monrovia on August 16. A crowd of several hundred local residents reportedly drove away the burial team and their police escort. The mob then forced open an Ebola isolation ward and took patients out, saying the Ebola epidemic is a hoax.

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A crowd enters the grounds of an Ebola isolation center in the West Point slum on August 16. The mob was reportedly shouting, "No Ebola in West Point."

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A health worker disinfects a corpse after a man died in a classroom being used as an Ebola isolation ward Friday, August 15, in Monrovia.

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Health workers in Kenema screen people for the Ebola virus on Saturday, August 9, before they enter the Kenema Government Hospital.

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Aid worker Nancy Writebol, wearing a protective suit, gets wheeled on a gurney into Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on August 5. A medical plane flew Writebol from Liberia to the United States after she and her colleague Dr. Kent Brantly were infected with the Ebola virus in the West African country.

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Members of Doctors Without Borders adjust tents in the isolation area in Kailahun on July 20.

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Boots dry in the Ebola treatment center in Kailahun on July 20.

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Dr. Jose Rovira of the World Health Organization takes a swab from a suspected Ebola victim in Pendembu, Sierra Leone, on Friday, July 18.

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Red Cross volunteers disinfect each other with chlorine after removing the body of an Ebola victim from a house in Pendembu on July 18.

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A scientist separates blood cells from plasma cells to isolate any Ebola RNA and test for the virus Thursday, April 3, at the European Mobile Laboratory in Gueckedou, Guinea.

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Health specialists work Monday, March 31, at an isolation ward for patients at the facility in southern Guinea.

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EXPAND GALLERY

The center is slowly being rebuilt, but it lacks basic equipment and facilities. Medical workers have to wash their protective gear for reuse and have little more than a squirt of bleach to rely on.

'I'm scared of everything'

It is the only refuge for the slum's frightened residents. But the most that they can hope for is to be made comfortable while they wait either to overcome the virus -- or not.

Like many residents of West Point, Charming Fallah, a hairdresser, has to travel out of the township to make a living. She is the only breadwinner for her two children and her elderly parents.

"Right now, my mother doesn't have anything," she told CNN. "First, I was the one that provided for her. But as time goes by, she's complaining the rice is finished. I just came from my parents' house and she has nothing."

Asked if she is more scared by the disease or by hunger, Fallah replied: "Both. That's what's worrying us. The hunger, the Ebola, everything. I'm scared of everything."

Her fears are far from unfounded. Experts have described the West African outbreak, centered in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, as the worst in the history of the virus.

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120 healthcare workers died from Ebola

The World Health Organization said Monday that 120 health care workers have died in the Ebola outbreak, and twice that number have been infected.

Public health experts say several factors are to blame, including a shortage of protective gear and improper use of the gear they do have.

In a commentary released this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wrote that personal protective gear made to shield health care workers from Ebola-contaminated fluids isn't being used properly. The commentary says that even with the correct gear, a health care worker is at risk for infection if contaminated protective clothing is not removed correctly.

The Ebola virus is transmitted through direct or indirect contact between bodily fluids from an infected patient; that's why taking off the protective gear correctly is essential.

Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine, says following the proper sequence of removing protective gear can keep health care workers from infecting themselves.

The sequence is simple. You start with the gloves, then take off the eye protection, gown and surgical mask. Follow up with washing your hands.

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"Because if you leave your gloves on, and take off your eye protection first, you could pass the fluids from the gloves to your eye mucus," explains Schaffner. "No matter where you are, no matter what day of the week it is, never change the sequence of how you take the equipment off."

One or two doctors per 100,000 people

The fact that the disease has killed so many people working to care for infected patients is making it increasingly hard to combat the virus in West Africa, WHO said.

"It depletes one of the most vital assets during the control of any outbreak. WHO estimates that in the three hardest-hit countries, only one to two doctors are available to treat 100,000 people, and these doctors are heavily concentrated in urban areas."

The threat can mean other health facilities close, as staff members choose to stay home rather than risk their lives. This means other medical needs, such as help with childbirth and malaria treatment, are neglected.

"The fact that so many medical staff have developed the disease increases the level of anxiety: if doctors and nurses are getting infected, what chance does the general public have?" the group wrote.

"In some areas, hospitals are regarded as incubators of infection and are shunned by patients with any kind of ailment, again reducing access to general health care."

The heavy toll is also making it harder to secure support from sufficient numbers of foreign medical staff, the group said.

Last week, a WHO health care worker was infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone. The organization has temporarily pulled its health workers from the Kailahun post and has sent a team to review the incident.

"This was the responsible thing to do. The field team has been through a traumatic time through this incident," Dr. Daniel Kertesz, a WHO representative in Sierra Leone, said in a statement. "They are exhausted from many weeks of heroic work, helping patients infected with Ebola. When you add a stressor like this, the risk of accidents increases."

Blood and otherbodily fluids

Ebola is one of the world's most virulent diseases and is transmitted through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids of infected people.

The outbreak has forced various nations to take drastic action, including Ivory Coast, which has said it is closing borders it shares with Guinea and Liberia for an indefinite period.

Senegal also closed its borders over Ebola fears. The closure includes any aircraft and ships traveling to Senegal from Guinea, Sierra Leone or Liberia.

Amid fears of the disease's spread, the Philippines recalled 115 peacekeepers from Liberia.

Dr. Peter Paul Galvez, a spokesman for the Philippines' Department of National Defense, said they would be repatriated as soon as possible. They will be quarantined before departure for 21 days, then quarantined again in the Philippines for another 21 days.

Early symptoms of Ebola include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. These symptoms can appear two to 21 days after infection.